Don't Know What You've Got Til…
by caballlah
Summary: After Kitezh, Sam catches up with a woman who's going too fast.


When she first heard from Jonah, he was babbling about Lara being in _Syria,_ getting into a _shootout_ like she was some Wild West gunslinger. She could barely stand to hear Lara's name. Then she would've given anything to hear it. Yamatui all over again, only this time Lara knew the risks, the costs. And she just threw herself in with no one to watch her back. Jonah couldn't keep up with her. He never could.

The next time he called, it was a relief and a maiming all at once. Sam was on fire, throwing herself into cold water and the water was poisoned. Her nightmare was safe.

Jonah couldn't tell her the half of it, but he kept insisting Lara was okay and that it was over, and now Lara was studying the valley she'd found, saved. Like it was a sabbatical. Like she was on vacation.

All the times she'd dragged Lara to a club, a bar, a party, and now Lara was getting her revenge. Dragging her into this.

How was Sam not supposed to buy a plane ticket?

* * *

Sam wondered if Lara would even recognize her. Her heavy parka and ski overalls weren't the kind of club-ready outfits she used to favor, but then, Siberia wasn't known for its clubbing. She couldn't remember the last time she'd put on make-up. Sometimes it was an effort just to wash her face.

Sam looked at herself in the mirror, itself stained and cracked, but still practically an amenity in the bed and breakfast she'd rented out in the tiny Mongolian village that Lara had brushed against, as ghostly as a fingerprint on clear glass.

The beauty in her reflection seemed mocking, more Himiko than her. It was plain and stony and blunt, more Lara's than her own, and in the eyes there was something ugly. Something she'd wanted to protect Lara from. But then there was no one to protect Lara from herself.

* * *

Lara didn't come down from the mountain often. No monk did, and what was Lara's devotion except for religious, worshipping her father and mother, god and martyr, thinking that she shared her faith with Sam when _she_ had always worshipped _her._

She told herself she wouldn't go up the mountain. That was too far, _too close,_ and even if she'd go to the ends of the earth for Lara, she wouldn't step over them.

Lara came to her. Down the mountain, in a coat as battered and torn as Sam felt, face weather-beaten and scarred and oh so effervescently _alive._

Bruises fading and cuts healing and she'd never be so happy if she'd spent those weeks with Sam, in London, as safe as they'd used to be when the world had only had room for them and not all their shadows.

"Sam."

The word slipped out of her like a breath after she'd been punched in the gut.

Sam knew how she felt. She just wanted to _look_ at Lara, no matter how much it hurt to see the wounds. She could imagine Lara felt the same way. She was just perceptive enough to see the wounds on the inside.

For her, Sam tried to be her old self. "I should've brought my camera. This would've made a great moment for our reality show."

Lara lurched forward like Frankenstein's Monster, not showing whether it was her wounds that crippled her or her shock, and embraced Sam. And that was the same. That had always been the same. The feel of Lara could never not be familiar. The woman who had picked her up and carried her out of hell. The woman who had played with her hair as they watched _Coronation Street_. The woman… just _the_ woman…

"It's unbelievable, Sam!" Lara broke away, all but her hand, that twined with Sam's as she pulled her along. "Absolutely incredible! Byzantine ruins, relics dating back to medieval times, _Mongols_ …"

"How are you?" Sam asked. She could believe all the magic and mysteries, but not that she was staring at the back of Lara's head, seeing that ponytail again.

"I'm fine. _Amazing._ There are enough ruins for a lifetime of excavations…" Lara had led her to a sat-link, and was now plugging a USB drive into it. Must've been how Jonah had contacted her. "I'm just looking into the broad strokes, trying to jot everything down before the elements have their way… I had to burn a few places down…"

"How are you?" Sam insisted, and for a moment when Lara turned to her, there was a little slip, a hunger that Lara didn't want to admit and Sam didn't want to hear.

"I'm fine," Lara said again. "Didn't Jonah tell you?"

"I didn't know Jonah was your messenger service."

" _Someone_ has to talk to you." Lara looked down at her hand, still nestled against Sam's, and she reflectively wiped her eyes. "You may not need rescuing anymore, but I do like to know you're okay."

"Take off the coat," Sam said. "Let me see."

"How many times did I want to see you, Sam? How many times did I _beg_ to see you…"

"I'm here."

"I remember what it felt like when you were with me. This isn't it."

"No? What was it like?"

"It was _easy,"_ Lara hissed at her. "For once in my life, it was easy."

Her hand still held to Sam's. Sam pulled a chair from the table the sat-link was lying on, sitting down not far enough away for Lara to be unable to reach, not sure what to do with the connection between them. She'd even accept Lara knowing, if she'd just do something…

"I'm sorry it's not easy anymore," Sam said.

"It is. It's too damned easy and it's too damned hard and I almost stopped thinking about you, I _almost…"_

"Let me see." Sam said it tiredly, resignedly, and she was almost surprised when Lara let go of her hand and unzipped her coat.

Her tanktop had been washed and sewn up, but the dried blood had faded, not been cleaned. And even with it repaired, Lara's arms were bare. The scars covered them like razor-wire, crisscrossing up and down, only alleviated by the bandages, and those were even worse, because that was where Lara still wasn't done healing. Or, God, that was where she'd hurt herself _again._

"You look like a few people I could name in the institution," Sam said.

"I got these saving people. And I'm healing. _I'm_ healing."

"You look worse to me."

Lara laughed bitterly. "They said that about my father too. He was right, Sam. He and my mother, they were right about _everything."_

"If you're following in his footsteps, you should remember where he ended up."

Lara sat down and stared at Sam with those eyes that could be so alive and she said "He ended up _right."_

Sam looked away. Why did this have to make Lara happy? Why did it have to make her whole?

Why couldn't _she_ do that?

"I would've come," she said, but she muttered so much that maybe it came out "I should've come."

"You did," Lara said, sitting there. " _Technically,_ you flew out here and drove out here and… you're here. I never needed you to be passing me ammunition. I just needed to look at you." She ducked her head. "I needed to look at you so badly."

Sam couldn't ever explain how much Lara sounded like _herself_ when she admitted that, even though she was never so serious, never so hurt, but that was the Lara that had lost her mother, lost her father, the Lara that Sam had always tried to care for even with Lara's armor already on so tight and so thick. She was still there and she still needed her armor and she still needed Sam.

Sam reached out and put her hand on Lara's back, the back of her neck, Lara's ponytail under her thumb and between her fingers. She could feel Lara's breath heave and it meant everything to her and she meant everything to Lara.

"Is it an easy climb?" Sam asked, when she could feel from Lara's back that she hadn't started crying, hadn't stopped, no longer had to.

"No," Lara said, looking up. Her eyes could smile when the rest of her couldn't. "But you can make it."


End file.
